A Meditation on Love
Creation was created out of love, and it is preserved in love. Love is the foundation of all that exists. Love unites, bringing all things together, doing so, neither monistically nor dualistically, but interdependently. Love is capable of raising that which is ontologically lower to experience the life and ways of that which is higher; love can bring about the reconciliation of all, so that in the end, God can and will be all in all.
How can we understand love? What does love do to those in love? A lover joins himself to his beloved, for he willingly gives over his very being to his beloved: he empties himself of all that he is, and gives it as a gift to his beloved, for her to do as she will. But the lover takes it within her, and unites herself with her lover. And it is in that union the lover regains what he has given up, for the beloved also gives to her love all that she has, and this, of course, includes that which she received from her beloved, that is himself. But now he is transformed through love. What he gets back is himself, but it is himself in the light of love, and therefore, made new. As long as lovers remain united, they continuously share their being with each other, neither of them said to possess themselves in themselves, but only, through the mediation of their beloved: that is, through love, they find themselves to be persons, filled with an ever-increasing newness, instead of individuals stuck in themselves, unable to experience the glory of being.
This is true, not only between two human lovers, but also between the love between God and humanity. For God has given himself to us, emptied himself so that he can show his love (the incarnation is a Trinitarian event, even if it is only the person of the Word who has become man). Will we respond, and give back everything, including ourselves, so that we can experience the newness of being, the new life which only God can give to us? And this is the difference between the human and divine experience of the fact of love: the glory of human love is only analogous the glory of divine love; human love is finite, divine love is infinite; human love keeps one within the order of creation, divine love raises us back up so that we can participate in the Divine Life of the Trinity itself. But the greatness of the divine love does not tell us to forgo human love, but rather, as God is love, and desires to share itself with humanity, it seeks the united love of humanity to be given to it, just as the whole Trinity, and not just the Son, shares with us the love of God.
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The implications are immense!
In the Spirit, we can be taken into the self-giving of the Son and partake of his act of thanksgiving to the Father.
Divine love condescends and makes a space for us in–lifts us up into– its very life.
Henry,
What happens when one walks down the street and meets a homeless person who reaches out in significant ways — a smile, a hello, a friendly conversation, and so forth? How does love fit into that scenario? What imperatives flow out of this encounter? Does everything you say above have relevance in this situation as well?
While we raise our voice to levels of hysteria about human beings we cannot see we are radically indifferent to those we can see. I think John’s Gospel spoke to this predicament in analogous ways.
Does the word hypocrisy apply?
Gerald,
Obviously, one of the aspects of love is self-giving; humans, because they are in the image and likeness of God (love) should seek to follow the example of Christ. It is for this reason why St Francis was so appealing, and so Christ-like: he was able to overcome his own egoism, and give of himself, freely, to those who were in need, such as the lepers. And, what I said in the end, that our love for God is meant to be a unified love– humanity together was one, loving each other, helping each other, raising each other — as we look to God and the love of God for us and to us. When we break the love within humanity, and divide (with excuse for division), and force many into such grave, degrading situations (homelessness, etc), it is clear that it is these people Christ first reaches to (following the way of the prophets). If we want to find Christ, we come to them to see Christ in them; for it truly is the lowly who inherent the kingdom of God.
JB
I think there are limitless implications, because we are talking about the limitless love of God as it reaches to us, and guides us — as Mark rightfully says, in the Spirit to the space the Trinity has made for us by their kenotic love.
Gerald, “What’s love got to do with it?” Sorry, I could not help myself. The first feeling I experience walking down the street is being overwhelmed with many feelings ranging from sorrow, guilt, shame, helplessness, hopelessness, no words that can give them what they need, not enough money in my pockets to give them shelter, not enough wisdom to know what each one needs, and knowing that I haven’t given up enough to be a true disciple of Jesus.
I have not given up enough. I have not given up everything for Him. I think 5 million children die each year before their 5th birthday. I fall short because I am afraid to give up everything.
Love has no limits and if love is unitive then where is the union in our faith?
Now see what you have started right before dinner.
A fine meditation, Henry.
Love it Henry!
Just a thought about God creating us. Since God is Love and we are created in the image of God then it seems that there was no original sin but only the natural result of the image attempting to know itself. The image cannot know itself in isolation and in a physical existence there must be some sort of friction to stimulate a drive to know. God takes something mysterious from the man while the man is asleep. The man only knows what he sees physically and calls this unknown gift woman. She only knows herself by what the man has named her.
Being defined by the man is much different than being defined by the Creator. The man does not see that she is God’s gift of love to him. Why? Perhaps because the man does not know what love is at this point in his development. The man only knows through the senses and the senses only experience what is influencing them at that time. There is only stimulation and response.
This woman eventually wants to know who she is. She seems to have an openness to discover more than what she is told by the man. The image of God in her draws her to know what her creator knows. She seems to desire to join with her creator through understanding. This would be natural since the image would express similar characteristics to the creator. The desire to know or to understand in this experience is innocent and pure and is the evidence of the gift of the Creator to bring into union with itself everything that is created. The mystery of being human can only be understood through being united in love and with the source of love.
The image must experience duality and understand duality through the physical experience of suffering in the senses of the physical world. God had to become human in order to show us the Way to progress in this dualistic world towards a conscious union with the source of our existence.
God could not be a loving God if God did not suffer as a human being. If we are to suffer as a path to God then God must pave the way for us on this path and show us how to live this path of suffering and at the same time living it with love.
Just a couple of thoughts that were stimulated by your post. Thanks to all of you seekers of Love.
Ronald,
I would say there is original sin, but original sin was the creation of a “self” closed to the self as if absolute, as if God; egoism, which, then, caused humanity, in its free-unity, to be divided, and humanity is now fighting against itself, instead of loving itself..
Henry,
Self closes to self when self is overwhelmed either with fear or with too much input self becomes overloaded and short-circuited. When there is the birth of a new human being there is a shock to the child’s peace when there is the loss of the warmth and safety of the womb. Actually, now that you have stimulated my thought processes, the man and the woman were closed to self and each other. They were also closed to God. They were in the womb of creation and birth could only take place when it was time to leave the womb. It could only take place when there was a desire to know. When reality is experienced there is a it then creates an awakening of the senses and how the senses influence perception of self and others. The senses become overwhelmed with input and there is a desire to seek something manageable and to cover oneself with a blanket. Smallness and insignificance in relationship to all of creation overwhelms the awakening soul.
Adam only recognized the woman as Eve after he had awareness of the knowledge of good and evil.
Sin occurs later when there is law. There is no law unless one understands what law is in relationship to consequences within the law.
The interpretation of sin with the original human beings is the effect of law as it relates to areas of the human being that have not experienced the healing effects of God’s love in the renewal of the mind in areas of the interior life in which one has lost love and has never fully resolved the loss of love.
There is too much to explain in such little space and time.